South Asians Against Nukes
URL: groups.yahoo.com/group/SAAN_/message/999

o o o


The Praful Bidwai Column

February 26, 2007

Drifting Into Nuclear Blunderland

Scrap the Haripur plant!

by Praful Bidwai

After Singur and Nandigram, the West Bengal
government has opened another Pandora's Box with
a proposal to build a giant nuclear power
station, India's largest atomic plant, at Haripur
in East Medinipur district. The project is a
Central government initiative. But it enjoys
considerable support from the state's Left Front
government, led by the Communist Party of India
(Marxist-CPM).

The public knows very little about the Haripur
project except that it's likely to consist of six
reactors of 1,690 megawatts each, a size three
times bigger than the largest reactor the
Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) has ever built
(540 MW). Together, they will generate 10,000 MW
in a single location-contrasting sharply with
India's current nuclear capacity of 3,900 MW
spread over 6 sites.

Yet, such is the opacity surrounding Haripur that
the project hasn't even been discussed in the
state Cabinet. There is no clarity about which
agency will build it and with what resources.
Opacity is itself a strong enough reason to
question the Haripur project. But as we see
below, even stronger ecological, economic, social
and political arguments exist for scrapping it
altogether at today's early stage.

The Left Front in Bengal should seize the
initiative to do so for the same reasons that
Kerala's Left parties in the 1990s opposed a
nuclear power plant at Peringom in Kannur
district-namely, that nuclear power stations must
not be built in a densely populated region.
Deltaic Bengal is even more densely inhabited
than Kerala. Haripur is in a cyclone-prone area.
This further strengthens the argument.

Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has coined
a new slogan, "Agriculture - our foundation;
Industry - our future". This is painted all over
Kolkata. This suggests that large-scale industry
alone can develop Bengal, generate jobs and raise
incomes across-the-board.

Mr Bhattacharjee is backing Haripur on the
assumption that the key to Bengal's
industrialisation lies in nuclear power, an
abundant, safe, environmental benign and
economically competitive energy source, which is
rapidly growing the world over, and emerging as a
solution to the grave problem of global warming
caused by fossil-fuel burning.

This assumption is comprehensively wrong. It's
mired in naïve, outdated but techno-romantic
"Atoms for Peace" thinking of the early 1950s.
Despite huge subsidies by the state, nuclear
power has betrayed its early promise and turned
out unaffordably expensive, difficult to manage,
unacceptably unsafe, accident-prone, and
environmentally unsound.

Currently, the fixed capital costs of nuclear
power stations in most countries are 50 to 70
percent higher than those of coal- and oil-fired
electricity plants. These are translated into
higher unit costs of energy. Investing in nuclear
power is doubly unwise because that detracts from
developing renewable energy, some of which (e.g.
wind) has already become commercially competitive.

The history of nuclear power is a story,
according to energy consultant Amory Lovins, of
the greatest failure in the world's industrial
history. It's also a story of euphoric
projections and repeatedly missed targets. Thus,
had the nuclear industry's projections, made a
quarter-century ago, materialised, the globe
would have had 10 times more nuclear power than
it has today. India is a prime example of this
failure. We're still well under half of the
target (10,000 MW) set for 1980!

Nuclear power contributes 16 percent to global
electricity generation-and an even more modest 6
percent to energy consumption. This contribution
will shrink rapidly in the coming decades. In
place of the 114 reactors (of a world total of
435) that will be retired within a decade from
now on reaching the age of 40 years, only 29 new
ones are under construction, according to the
International Atomic Energy Agency, the body
mandated to promote nuclear power. Even if
reactors in the nebulous "planning" stage are
added, the new capacity won't match the capacity
being retired.

Even the conservative pro-nuclear Economist
magazine concedes that most reactors in the rich
OECD countries, which account for two-thirds of
the world total, will close down. Major countries
like Germany, Britain, Italy, Sweden and Belgium
are phasing out nuclear power. Even France, the
world's most nuclear-powered country, with 79
percent of power drawn from the atom, has shut
down 11 reactors and has plans for only one new
reactor.

This means there's no global nuclear
reconnaissance, as romantically predicted. Only a
few Asian countries, including China, South
Korea, Indonesia and India, have plans for major
expansion. These aren't societies that greatly
value environment safety.

Nuclear power bristles with safety and
environmental problems. Radiation is the most
ubiquitous. Each stage of the nuclear fuel cycle
releases ionising radiation, an invisible,
intangible, silent poison, which damages the DNA
of cells and causes cancer or genetic disorders.
Radiation can't be eliminated or extinguished; it
can only be relocated. Radiation is harmful in
all doses-in routine emissions, as well as big
releases.

Nuclear power is highly accident-prone. It
involves complex, interlocked systems operating
at relatively high temperatures and pressures.
Chernobyl, which has claimed 95,000 lives since
1986, remains the world's worst accident. Yet,
all reactor types can undergo a catastrophic
accident with a core meltdown and large
radioactivity releases. No amount of extraneous
or marginal "protection", like containment domes,
can remedy structural flaws in existing reactor
designs. The probability of a Chernobyl is
admittedly low, but its consequences so
unacceptable that even an ultra-low probability
isn't good enough.

Radioactive wastes are nuclear power's worst
legacy. All nuclear activity produces wastes;
some remain dangerously active for thousands of
years. Thus, plutonium-239, formed as reactors
burn uranium, has a half-life of 24,400 years.
And uranium-235's half-life is 710 million years!
Science knows no container which can safely store
such wastes for so long. Disposal isn't remotely
on the agenda. No geological formations are
stable for that length of time. Building nuclear
plants is like constructing homes without
toilets, only more dangerous.

In Haripur's case, these generic problems are
compounded by location-specific issues. The
site's proximity to the eastern coalbelt (about
400 km) further undermines its economic
viability: the DAE itself says nuclear power is
only competitive beyond a distance of 800 km from
a coal pithead. The Haripur coast is notoriously
cyclone-prone and periodically lashed by waves
that make deep incursions. Should tidal water
enter the reactor building, as nearly happened at
Kalpakam during the tsunami 2 years ago, it's
liable to poison large swathes of land. It's
patently ill-advised to site a nuclear plant at
such a vulnerable location, where a 20 km-long
dyke (protective wall) was built decades ago to
prevent flooding.

The Haripur plant will pose serious human
problems. If the DAE follows its own siting
regulations-a 1.5 km-radius totally uninhabited
"exclusive zone" around the reactor, and a
further 30 km radius with a sparse population-,
it will have to evict over 10,000 families. This
is a mind-boggling number. West Bengal has no
land for resettling them. As I noted during a day
trip to Haripur, large numbers of people who live
next to the coast are fisherfolk, many of them
landless. Their livelihoods will be destroyed if
they are displaced.

The Haripur area, just 7 km from Kanthi town
(pop. 78,000), has a flourishing agrarian economy
enriched by sea and inland fisheries, fruit and
vegetable cultivation, reed-based handicrafts,
and other occupations. The land is
extraordinarily fertile.

Many farmers told me they earn close to Rs 3
lakhs per acre through rice and pulse
cultivation, and by growing brinjals, tomato and
gourds (for which Haripur is famous), as well as
cashewnuts, mangoes and chikoos. It would be
utterly tragic if this thriving, throbbing
economy with a potential for healthy
industrialisation were laid to ruin by the
mindless construction of a nuclear plant.

The entire population of the area is opposed to
the plant. It's overwhelmingly literate and has
heard of Chernobyl, radiation and plutonium.
People oppose the plant not only because it will
displace and impoverish them. They say there
should be "no nuclear power, anywhere, anytime".
Since November 17 last, the people have blocked
entry into Haripur. DAE teams were twice sent
back. No government representative can enter the
village in a four-wheeler. There will be serious
bloodshed if the government imposes the plant on
a people determined to resist it.

It doesn't make sense even from the DAE's point
of view to impose it. It'll get further
discredited by repeating a larger version of
Narora. When Narora was chosen for India's third
nuclear power station for political reasons, DAE
scientists, including the late A K Ganguly,
opposed it on the ground that nuclear power has
no place in the lush Gangetic plains. This
applies a fortiori to Haripur. The Left Front
will incur the public's anger if it imposes the
project on it. Its own ranks are opposed to it.
It must respect them-and sound economic, human
and environmental logic. It must scrap the plant
NOW!-end-

____________

SOUTH ASIANS AGAINST NUKES (SAAN):
An informal information platform for activists
and scholars concerned about the dangers of
Nuclearisation in South Asia

SAAN Website:
http://www.s-asians-against-nukes.org
or
http://perso.orange.fr/sacw/saan/

SAAN Mailing List:
To subscribe send a blank message to:
saan_-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
________________________________
DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials
carried in the posts do not necessarily reflect
the views of SAAN compilers.